That Personality Which Limits And Oppresses His True Self

The Grade of Master of the Temple is described in Liber 418 and other sources, and clearly identifies that the essential attainment of the grade is “the perfect annihilation of that personality which limits and oppresses his true self”.

This phrase has been imperfectly understood since it was first written, and with further commentary within and without the Tradition by those without direct Understanding consequently has caused more confusion on the subject of the Master of the Temple than any other literature in the Western Magickal corpus. Read literally, the quote above would assert that in order for the Adept to attain and grade of Master of the Temple, they must psychically lobotomize their own personality. Such a creature might be imagined to be a marionette, mindlessly moving in response to universal laws it is no longer cognizant of. The personality is an object in consciousness, employing the faculties of memory and reason to interpret the perceived present or future through the lens of past experience. The personality is comprised of a host of individual components both conscious and unconscious which in aggregate is by association assumed to be “me”. In this context, annihilation does not connote destruction or defeat, but rather to render void by disidentification. The Master still has a personality, still experiences anger, sadness, fear and other emotions as objects in consciousness. However, by recognizing that they are merely objects in consciousness and consequently have no ultimate existence he disidentifies with them and consequently is no longer bound by them. With the removal of those limitations caused by identification with the personality, the true self can act. The personality remains, and can be employed as a useful tool, but is no longer recognized as the seat of identity.

The Magister Templi is pre-eminently the Master of Mysticism, that is, His Understanding is entirely free from internal contradiction or external obscurity; His word is to comprehend the existing Universe in accordance with His own Mind. He is the Master of the Law of Sorrow (Dukkha).

The use of the word mysticism has been criticized by those whom have interpreted it to mean direct subjective knowledge of the Christian or other expressions of God, or have mistakenly understood it to mean that it is possible to intuit the nature of ultimate reality. Rather, what is being discussed is the supra-rational understanding that the real center of experience is not the mind, but the Self, being the awareness in which everything happens. Self is the common factor of all experience, that central “I am”  without predicates that until now was enveloped by the mind, only occasionally breaking free in rare glimpses of intuition or insight. This spark of “I am”, being conscious of consciousness has no attributes and cannot be described. It is being only self, and being my self is all there is. It is nondual; everything that exists is my self, as there is nothing that is different from me. Without time and causation, what happens can only happen now, spontaneously. Being nondual is the state of love as compared to the desire for love, for All is in Self. The Self is the source of all reality, the sphere in which the world is manifested. The Law of Sorrow (Dukkha) can be translated many ways, but in this context primarily refers to the realization that all phenomena are objects in consciousness and therefore transitory and without true reality.

Mysticism and Adepthood

"The aim of the Adept is union with the Absolute; this is the
summit of True Mysticism, and yet, for the Adept, this height of
attainment has a distinct interpretation. Rather than his own
identity dissolving within the Absolute State of Being, merging and
unifying like the droplet within the ocean, the Adept realises
himself as Absolute: a Perfected Unique Being, and thus as an
Active Principle of New Creation. Taking Himself to be the Hand
of Fate, the struggle of the Adept is that of Lucifer: a War against
That which resists or denies his Will to become the Sole and
Unique One, a Singularity of Unique Power, the Polestar of his
own Universe: QUTUB."
Chumbley, Andrew. QUTUB

Early along the path of spiritual knowledge, one is given the thought that ones' body, emotions, memories and even thoughts are not really themselves. For those who explore this remarkable yet simple notion, eventually one comes to understand that they are themselves a monad of pure consciousness, beyond the body, beyond even the mind. The contemplative realizes that he merely uses the body and mind; when he tells his finger to scratch his head it does so, when he directs his thoughts they obediently shift from a given set of thought to another, and when he experiences fear he can choose to not allow free reign. For all their wonders, the body and mind are distinct from his inner identity, his inner being. This understanding is called self-realization.

Yet self-realization is not the end of it. By further introspection—unless one gets stuck—one comes to understand that his own consciousness, his own spiritual existence, is not ultimate. Even in his own essential identity, he himself is not the be-all and end-all of everything. There are other living beings too, and they’re not just projections of himself. And there’s a material cosmos out there, hard and tangible and unlikely to be something he has merely imagined up. And even if he thinks that in reality such distinctions at last no longer exist, that in truth there is only absolute oneness, and that all else is but an illusion, a dream, he still has to ask himself, “Where does this illusion come from?”

In this way his thoughts bring him to realize that there is an Absolute Truth, a source of all energies, all realities, and he sees himself to be a part of that Absolute. By considering his own identity as a conscious individual—a conscious person—he realizes the individual personal nature of that Absolute. Finally, he recognizes himself not as a component, not as one possible expression of the Absolute but rather as the ultimate manifestation of the Absolute.

Attachment

Attachment is an interesting concept. We are attached to our lovers, pets, jobs, possessions and illimitable other things. Attachment can be understood not as "me" but more accurately as "mine". In this context, attachments imply ownership, sovereignty, dominion. I have a book given to me by my father several years ago. It was his, and shows decades of use in the worn bindings and yellowing pages. However, the book has sentimental meaning for me.  Is this attachment? Of course it is. I am perfectly aware that if the book is burned tomorrow or is lost that my physical being will not be damaged, and any mental distress I suffer will only be that which I allow by one means or another.

It is the awareness of attachments that is important. All attachments are voluntarily accepted on one level or another, even if the acceptance was unconscious or the reasons obscure. However, the power of those attachments to rule us is entirely dictated by our awareness of the attachments, as only with knowledge can one choose to either maintain or release that attachment, or to mandate what power it embodies.

One of the most pernicious attachments one must eventually encounter is the attachment to the ego. The ego may be loosely defined as the conscious mind and the apparent personality of the individual. The ego uses reason and other faculties to satisfy the desires of the mind, but who is really minding the store? Is the ego the complete self? Of course not. The ego is a convenient interface of the mind to the universe, again the conscious self that seeks to achieve the desires of the mind when possible and to override them when necessary. The ego deals with desires from conscious and unconscious elements, including suppressed ones and even the desires of the ego itself.

Most people confuse the ego for the self, which is like confusing the receptionist at the front desk for the corporation. People seldom expend the time and patience to explore and integrate the shadow, or to relive and accept traumatic memories and so bring these components into the realm of the conscious instead of the recesses of the unconscious and suppressed unconscious. It is a process of growth, where the whole of yesterday is expanded to become part of a larger whole today. Bringing unconscious elements into the conscious does not mean the ego expands, although that can happen, but rather that there are more and more conscious elements of the self present. This results in a change in the relationships in the mind. With the conscious contents of the self expanding there is a correspondingly smaller percentage of ego. This is not to say the ego gets smaller, but rather that the percentage of the conscious mind that is ego is proportionately smaller due to growth. As the conscious self continues to emerge, the self must give us exclusive identification with the ego.

This is a critical stage. As one ages, this cessation of exclusive identification with the ego allows for further development. With the egoic focus on the satisfaction of desires no longer the exclusive motivator, love for others can manifest to a greater degree and one can to varying degrees emerge into transpersonal awareness. Concern for others, community, nations and global units begins to emerge. Note the parallel here in that the (self) concerns of yesterday expand into the (transpersonal) concerns of tomorrow.

Perspectives on RHP and LHP Thought

“Black magic and the left-hand path serve ego and lead away from the True Self and the True Will, yet he is essentially saying that you can rise ever higher on the evolutionary ladder by submerging yourself in the primitive qliphothic primeval slime beneath the Ladder of Lights.  Those above the abyss are capable of this, in a different manner, but for those below the abyss this is sheer nonsense.1 ”

Before we begin, it is necessary to establish a common understanding of the essential natures of the right hand path and left hand path perspectives. Although historical origins are interesting, at this juncture we shall confine ourselves with current definitions. While specific associations vary from tradition to tradition and occasionally within specific traditions, the essential distinction lies in the basic assumption or rejection of various forms of dualism and the values that derive from those assumptions. In the interest of clarity, select sub-beliefs such as the Dianic and Theistic Satanic corpus will be left unexamined.

One basic assumption that forms the foundation of these belief systems is whether the individual or organization in question subscribes to the duality of absolute good and absolute evil. Right hand path philosophies typically have a strong adherence to the belief in the duality of absolute good and evil. Often this belief is shared by many monotheistic religions and this certainty of absolute good or evil is the foundation for rules of conduct and other practices that allow a rigid standard of determining good and evil within a larger community. By contrast, the left hand path stresses that good and evil are relative, a continuum of shades of gray. This moral relativism means that with exceptions moral judgments are largely personal interpretations, leading to an acceptance of more flexible interpretations of good and evil when considering personal acts or the acts of others.

A second basic duality underlying the essential difference between these two schools of thought is esoteric or exoteric authority. The left hand path initiatory school of thought is esoteric, meaning that it is tacitly or explicitly understood that the path to spiritual perfection can be found by looking in and perfecting the self, cultivating self-awareness by a growing understanding of one’s inner nature and ultimate responsibility for success and failure is the sole provenance of the practitioner. Others may provide guidelines or one may choose to use an individual as an example, but it is a purely personal choice.

By contrast, the right hand path series of thought is primarily exoteric in nature, deriving validity from an outside source which is typically a god/goddess or higher principle such as Justice. For example, the right-hand religion of Christianity derives the validity of their initiatory path by adherence to the principles exemplified by Jesus Christ, with followers seeking to become more Christlike and consequently more in accordance to His will.  Although not always, the mechanism of this relationship is submission to Jesus Christ, to essentially become an avatar of him on earth. Some right-hand path schools of thought combine elements of exoteric and esoteric assumptions, such as various manifestations of Western ceremonial orders such as the A. A. and others. In organizations of this type, the same esoteric self-examination and self-perfection is explicitly part and parcel of the initiatory process, but derives spiritual authority and validity ultimately through exoteric means.

The third and final major distinction between right hand and left hand path is the status of the ego in the practice of the respective traditions. This is perhaps the most difficult to present. Right hand path philosophies are surprisingly consistent in their identification of the ego as an obstacle to be overcome. These traditions seek to overcome the ego, to erode it, to excise it, overpower it or by various mechanisms allow it to serve the allied higher power or principle or be obliterated in its entirety, allowing that higher power or principle to manifest through the now-perfected vessel.

By contrast, the left hand path of initiation has varying views of the role of the ego at various stages of development. During the period of development characterized by initial magickal development before the experience which in the Golden Dawn traditions is typically referred to as the CHGA, the ego is idealized as the primary, driving force of magickal power and the road to initiatory experience. This period is typically characterized by the expansion of the personality by the systematic process of accessing and assimilating unconscious and repressed elements of the psyche into a whole united by the ego. By the use of the ego as the uniting force which assimilates these emerging elements, it typically hypertrophies with results typically identified with scorn by right hand path devotees.

The Changing Role of Ego in Left Hand Path Initiation

As previously mentioned, prior to the interval of development associated with the sephira of Tiphareth is concerned with the integration of the complete psyche under the aegis of the ego with the common but not necessary occurrence of egoic hypertrophy. However, the role of the ego in the left hand path initiatory pattern must necessarily change, manifesting in two successor phases corresponding to the interval after successful invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel and the Crossing of the Abyss. These are changes both in the perceived role and the manifestation of the ego, and are necessary preconditions in order to achieve final maturation.

In both right hand and left hand path perspectives, the initial success of the Conversation is a milestone of sorts, and reflects the beginning of a new phase of development. During this interval and ending with the initiation of the Abyss experience, the right hand path and its emphasis on disempowerment  or more accurately disidentification with the ego serves well. However, in the case of the left hand path initiate and its focus until this interval with empowering the ego a new approach must be learned that does not conflict with personal mores but eases the apparent conflict between identifying with the ego and seeking to expand the psyche to encompass the archetypal true self. 

The resolution to this apparent conflict is to begin the process of ceasing to exclusively identify with the ego and to begin also identifying with aspects of the Holy Guardian Angel, or idealized self as archetype. This is not an expansion of the ego, but rather an expansion of the self by identifying with additional and formerly repressed manifestations of the emergent personality in a new crystallization.  




1 Frater Keallach 93/676. “Michael Aquino - Part I” Encyclical Letter May 1987 E.V., Anno LXXXIII

The Path to Mastery

In the Western Tradition of Magick there is an event known as ‘Crossing the Abyss’, which marks a certain milestone in the magician’s magical career. However, due to a considerable dearth of information on the subject the general conception of the phenomena ranges from undergoing a personal depression to an actual dragging of the unfortunate into Hell. However, based on my own personal experience and that of others, I can tell you that crossing the abyss is a metaphor for a process of realization. The realization is not specific to a particular tradition or even the magical mindset, but is a personal event recognized in various forms thoughout history.

The Path of Mastery
The path of Mastery in the Western tradition is not to be understood as a system of trials and rewards. Rather, it is a process of growing understanding, often undertaken without conscious choice, that results in the ability to perceive reality as the Absolute reality. Let me clear up a small point of common definitions here. Awareness is defined for the purposes of this missive as the original state of mind, before it mistook the emerging personality construct for itself and identified with it. It is the receptive state of not-knowing. Consciousness is the state of recognition of an object, whether it is a rock nearby, a memory or an itching of the earlobe. Mind is defined as thinking about an object.

The problem with the everday “waking” mentality is that everyday consciousness as defined above puts the entire world into an “us and them” context. We recognize Steven’s shoes, my keys, her groceries and so forth. A subtler problem is the nature of this mine/not mine distinction because it is an artifact of the ego, a self-sustaining mechanism that keeps the mind in an egocentric context. In essence, the world is divided into “me” and “not-me”. However, when one recognizes that one’s thoughts, possessions and tasks to perform, as well as those of everyone else in this world and indeed all of the universe are nothing but objects in consciousness, it is a complete liberation. You have thoughts, but you are not your thoughts. You have possessions, but you are not your possessions. You have tasks, but you are not your tasks. The recognition that all save the base Awareness are merely objects of consciousness, mere constructs removes feelings of attachment. Fundamental changes in perception take place, as ownership issues are deprioritized or fall away completely.

States and Stages
A recent review of the NewAeon publication provoked a memory of an observation I made in the past. One commonly misunderstood aspect of initiation is the nature of consciousness itself. Consciousness is not monolithic, and changes in consciousness often manifest in surges curiously reminiscent of waves beating on the surf. During the rites and meditations it is possible and even necessary to exalt consciousness, but all too quickly this fades although insights or partial manifestations of this state may linger. The 7=4 initiation is an example of this. However, people including even many promising adepts often mistake a temporarily elevated state of consciousness for a stage of consciousness, the former being temporary and the latter being either a permanent evolution or revolution of understanding. These are not to be understood as separate phenomena, but rather a scale starting with a “peak experience” state, moving through a plateau stage of increasing indwelling with this new understanding and finally reaching the stable state of permanent assimilation.

The successful attainment of a state is not necessary for the eventual attainment of a stage, but serves to "grease the wheels" in a metaphysical sense by providing the glimmer of Understanding necessary. It is safe to say that an initiation does not provide for attainment, but serves to reflect recognition of an attainment or to provide that state that serves as a guidepost for the eventual stage of development. The achieved state should be a goad to further effort, not the signal that it is time to necessarily stop and integrate new knowledge into a presumed whole on the way to Mastery. The admonition to "Invoke Often" also applies to achieving these exalted states again and again, so that the adept can plateau and eventually stabilize at the new stage.

Silent Witness
As mentioned above, the essential awareness that is the characteristic of Mastery is that all phenomena, even the perception of the personal self are objects in consciousness. For example, when enjoying the scent of a rose it is easily understood that the aroma we are experiencing is nothing more than chemical stimulation of certain centers of the brain, and that emotional connotations and memories are also understood in the same sense. Similarly, the perception of time is an object of consciousness; when thinking about tomorrow we are doing that thinking in the here and now. The ability to experience the universe with the prime awareness is often referred to as the Silent Witness or the Impersonal Witness. This awareness of the Self is an experience that a stupendous vastness, an absolute silence, a complete impersonality, and a singularly clear but absolutely uninvolved awareness of everything. One is merely a witness, a silent and unchanging witness. This is a direct insight, not the result of a conscious thought process but rather of a metaconscious process.

The Crossing
The concept of the Abyss has been so filled with flowery and turgid prose as to be almost deliberately misleading to the reader. The experience of the Abyss is the emergence of the feelings of disgust, fear and confusion that are a necessary part of growing to Mastery. Just as a child experiences fear and anxiety during separation from the breast of the mother at one stage of development and follows it later with fear and anxiety as they learn to cope with communicating with others and their burgeoning emotions, so does the adept face their trials. Consider that your mind is attempting to let go of the boundaries of self and not-self, of the distinction between yesterday and tomorrow, and the underlying assumption that the ego is not actually the self and you will understand why this is so terrifying. It is among other things the death of the ego, or to be more specific the exclusive identification with the ego.

In some cases, these fears and anxieties are anthropomorphized to some degree in the manifestation of Choronzon. The actual manifestation is specific to each individual, but the process for overcoming it is straightforward. As a object in consciousness, silence and acceptance of this manifestation (or the unembodied manifestations of the fears Choronzon represents) are the means to not defeat him, not to temporarily become him (as Crowley wrote) but to accept him. Acceptance becomes integration, and the beast at this level is gone.

Magister Templi or Master of the Temple (8°=3°)
“The principal business of this grade is to obtain a perfect understanding of the Universe. The essential Attainment is the perfect annihilation of that personality which limits and oppresses his true self. The Magister Templi is pre-eminently the Master of Mysticism, that is, his Understanding is entirely free from internal contradiction or external obscurity; his Word is to comprehend the existing Universe in accordance with his own Mind. This grade corresponds to Binah on the Tree of Life.”

The above quotation is the “classic” definition of the Master of the Temple, the basic enlightened state. However, while elegantly written it is not terribly straightforward in what the hallmarks of the Master is. For one, the assertion that the attainment is “the essential annihilation of that personality which limits and oppresses his true self” must be clearly misunderstood as potentially dangerously misleading. The process of evolution toward Mastery is essentially a process of synthesis and growth, where the presumed whole becomes part of another larger whole. As we mature, we move from identification of the self from the body as children but later identify the self with the ego. The body didn’t disappear, but we no longer exclusively identified with it. As we learn to confront and assimilate those repressed qualities of our natures, they too become part of the larger and integrated whole. So the process continues, integrating more and more of our minds including the spectrum of conscious and unconscious, achieving greater unities and arriving at more and more essential understandings of self.

At the stage of the experience identified with the birth of the Master of the Temple, the individual has an experience of the Silent Witness. In other words, the individual has an experience of an awareness without dualities such as now and then, his and hers, and most directly self and not-self. While the poverty of language does not fully convey the meaning of the experience, the essential experience removes boundaries, so that there is only the timeless moment of now, with no perception of self or not-self; the essential awareness, unchanging and unattached, recognizing all as objects of consciousness only, independent of intellect, memories or desire. The result of experiencing the absolute in my case was a feeling of detached serenity and intense flash of the classic “Eureka! I found it!” feeling when one receives a flash of insight. Others have described it as emptiness, bliss, a feeling of love for all things or an insight into the ultimate truth. In my case as well as in most of the other individuals whom I have encountered sharing this experience, it did not initially manifest in ritual or meditation, but rather manifested during the day during the most mundane of tasks. This is not to say that the meditations and ritual and not necessary pre-requisites, but that they serve to create the path. Only after the path exists can you walk on it. As previously stated, this is a state of consciousness. By definition this is a temporary experience, but an experience that can be repeated and in fact must be regularly.

The remainder of the classical definition of the grade of the Master of the Temple flows as a consequence of this experience. The observation that understanding is free of internal contradiction reflects in many cases work that should have been accomplished during the 7=4 period, where the conscious and unconscious elements of the mind have been integrated so far as possible. The reference to external obscurity reflects his growing awareness in consciousness that external objects are (along with internal ones) merely objects of consciousness, and this understanding requires a complete re-examination of the Universe in light of this development as the former symbols of consciousness are integrated as signs in the mind. Note that this grade like all others is a transitional stage, not to be confused with some eternal and unchanging; in many ways, this grade is a signpost that the work has well and truly begun, it will eventually flower into that of the Magus or even the Ipsissimus, but this is a continuum of experience that under the right conditions is self-correcting and self-sustaining.

Magus (9°=2°)
“The Magus seeks to attain Wisdom, declares his law, and is a Master of all Magick in its greatest and highest sense. His will is entirely free from internal diversion or external opposition; His work is to create a new Universe in accordance with his Will. This grade corresponds to Chokmah on the Tree of Life.”
The grade of Magus is the result of the Master continuing to regularly reach this experience, over time the process developing as a plateau consciousness. During this interval, the formerly peak experience of the absolute awareness intrudes more and more regularly into waking consciousness during period of mundane or magical activity. Consciousness continues to evolve and integrate this new understanding. The definition above states that part of the Work is to create a new Universe in accordance with his (or her) Will. The other part of the Western tradition also provides that the Magus must pronounce a suitable Word to initiate a new Aeon.

Nicely put, but flowery language always trades elegance for meaning. The Magus synthesizes his new understanding of the universe into a whole. To the Magus, this Word (or system of magick, or whatever the Magus chooses to encapsulate the essence of their new understanding), is then passed to others. This Word to others is only a symbol, and not the awareness of the Master. When the Magus was starting their magical career, they used magical seals, correspondences and other symbols to bring about developments in their consciousness, and the Magus returns the favor by providing new symbols to the emerging generation.

The advantage of this approach is that the symbols presented to students change over time, staying current with the times, and are more readily acceptable to modern minds. This in part explains why the Chaos Magick paradigm is more popular than the ceremonial traditions of the past or even the modern resurrections of older religions. the mentality of man changes over time, and symbols once of great value must be re-interpreted and new symbols defined that will be understood.

Ipsissimus (10°=1°)
“Beyond the comprehension of the lower degrees. An Ipsissimus is free from limitations and necessity and lives in perfect balance with the manifest universe. Essentially, the highest mode of attainment. This grade corresponds to Kether on the Tree of Life.”
This stage marks the culmination of the experience begun by the Master of the Temple. Here, the understanding achieved as a peak or plateau is not completely integrated into consciousness. With a unity consciousness, there is no further boundaries between self and not-self. Indeed, “All is accomplished”.


“From Many, to One, to All”
Frater Tehiru
Michael Aaron Eckhard

States and Stages

A recent review of the NewAeon publication provoked a memory of an observation I made in the past. One commonly misunderstood aspect of initiation is that consciousness is not monolithic, and changes in consciousness often manifest in surges curiously reminiscent of waves beating on the surf. During the rites and meditations it is possible and even necessary to exalt consciousness, but all too quickly this fades although insights or partial manifestations of this state may linger. The 7=4 initiation is an example of this. However, people including even many promising adepts often mistake a temporarily elevated state of consciousness for a stage of consciousness, the former being temporary and the latter being either a permanent evolution or revolution of understanding.

The successful attainment of a state is not necessary for the eventual attainment of a stage, but serves to "grease the wheels" in a metaphysical sense by providing the glimmer of Understanding necessary. It is safe to say that an initiation does not provide for attainment, but serves to reflect recognition of an attainment or to provide that state that serves as a guidepost for the eventual stage of development. The achieved state should be a goad to further effort, not the signal that it is time to integrate new knowledge into a presumed whole on the way to Mastery. The admonition to "Invoke Often" also applies to achieving these exalted states again and again, so that the adept can plateau and eventually stabilize at the new stage.

Ruminations on the Goetia

The Goetia as you know has 72 spirits of varying orders as well as their spheres of influence and other details. I was looking at the various seals of the demons in the excellent Peterson version(The seals are not placed within a double circle, that is a change that later individuals put in. I agree with the notion that placing the demonic seals in a double circle is an attempt to limit them), and it occurred to me that while there are exceptions, in this timeframe many seals and so forth were derived from magic squares.

If this is indeed the case, it should be possible to reverse-engineer the square from which was derived from.

Us and Them

Let me clear up a small point of common definitions here. Awareness is defined for the purposes of recent and future discussions as the original state of mind. It is the receptive state of not-knowing. Consciousness is the state of recognition of an object, whether it is a rock nearby, a memory or an itching of the earlobe. Mind is defined as thinking about an object.

The problem here is that consciousness as defined above puts the entire world into an “us and them” context. We recognize Steven’s shoes, my keys, her groceries and so forth.  A subtler problem is the nature of this mine/not mine distinction because it is an artifact of the ego, a self-sustaining mechanism that keeps the mind in an egocentric context. However, when one recognizes that one’s thoughts, possessions and tasks to perform are all objects in consciousness, it is a complete liberation.  You have thoughts, but you are not your thoughts. You have keys and possessions, but you are not your possessions. You have tasks, but you are not your tasks. The recognition that all save the base Awareness are merely objects of consciousness, mere constructs removes feelings of attachment. Fundamental changes in perception take place, as ownership issues are deprioritized or fall away completely.

Observations in Meditation

It's funny how the mind works. The mechanism of the meditation is to be simply aware, without conscious thought. The goal is to be a mirror, with your awareness simply recognizing thoughts, memories, snippets of songs and so forth but not thinking of them with your awareness.  As I sat in the Formlessness, from time to time these stray thoughts entered my consciousness. I can't say how often or rapidly they came forward, because the state of Void is timeless. However, what I noticed was that when these thoughts came in, there was a distinct but subtle sense of pressure, of tightening when they entered my awareness. This sensation I had not considered before, but the sensation became more distinct as the meditation continued and seemed to have varying (albeit subtle) levels of intensity.

The second perception I have had before was that as I sat in my Aware state, at varying intervals these stray thoughts would come across my consciousness and were recognized as separate from my awareness. This awareness has been reached before, but in the past had been a temporary stage, a perception acquired after long, hard work. This perception of course is easily intellectually achieved but that is hardly the point.

A Tesseract Walkthrough

Now that everyone has reviewed the introductory material on this topic, it is time to actually work on navigating within a tesseract. As previously stated, a tesseract can be "unfolded" into eight (8) cubes in the same way that a paper cube can be unfolded into a calvalry cross. Now, having determined the vertices of the cubes in the method described previously, we end up with a table looking like this:

5	4	12	13	7	6	14	15
7	6	14	15	3	2	10	11
3	2	10	11	1	0	8	9
12	14	10	8	13	15	11	9
4	6	2	0	12	14	10	8
5	7	3	1	13	15	11	9
5	7	3	1	4	6	2	0
5	4	12	13	1	0	8	9

This is not terribly informative at this point. However, when the eight cubes are drawn out, the results are more informative. Please take a moment to review the below image, and note that I have left the eighth cube out of the drawing for clarity:

This drawing was created by sketching out the eight cubes, arbitrarily taking three cubes and stacking them on each other. For simplicity, I refer to these cubes as the base column, with the cubes being numbered (from the bottom) Base 1, Base 2 and Base 3. Similarly, the other four cubes shown are designated North, South, East and West cubes. The final cube (not shown) is referred to as the Transfer cube.If you look at the drawing, you will note that the cubes have been arranged so that the faces that touch another cube have the same numbers on their faces. For example, the east cube touches the Base 1 cube along the face 5,4,6,7 and the west cube touches the north cube along the face 2,6,0,4.

Now here comes the tricky part. The North, South, East and West cubes are not fixed in their positions. Note that these can be "rolled" up the Base Column to touch the central or upper cubes as well. This does not reflect that they are actually rolling, but that they are actually touching those cubes simultaneously. Let's take an example. Suppose that a visitor to the bottom Base Pillar cube decided to walk west into the West Cube. The visitor decides to climb up to the ceiling and go through it. From an outsiders perspective, the visitor would now be standing on the 6,7,3,2 face of the second cube in the Base Pillar! Someone who has watched the conclusion of the movie Labyrinth will immediately see the possibilities of movement inherent in the topography of a tesseract.

To clarify, now that the cubes for this example have been labeled we are left with the following table:

Base 1	5	4	12	13	7	6	14	15
Base 2	7	6	14	15	3	2	10	11
Base 3	3	2	10	11	1	0	8	9
East	12	14	10	8	13	15	11	9
North	4	6	2	0	12	14	10	8
South	5	7	3	1	13	15	11	9
West	5	7	3	1	4	6	2	0
Transfer	5	4	12	13	1	0	8	9

Next blog will detail the transfer cube!

Impersonal Witness

These two quotes stand by themselves. Normally a blog is one's own thoughts, but these words leapt off the page when I saw them. Too good not to share.

Impersonal Witness
As the Impersonal, one experiences oneself as a vast, dark, silent, emptiness. It is a sheer emptiness, boundless, infinite and absolutely silent. One experiences oneself as an emptiness that has no characteristic except that of being a totally silent Impersonal Witness. There is a stupendous vastness, an absolute silence, a complete impersonality, and a singularly clear but absolutely uninvolved awareness of everything. One is merely a witness, a silent and unchanging witness. (The Pearl Beyond Price, pg 426)

Impersonal Witness and personal life
This realization brings a new clarity and understanding to one's personal life. It makes it possible to see the role one is identifying with in one's life, and to know one's function, work and unique contribution in one's personal life. One can see how some characteristics or skills are developed in one's life, for some unique role or purpose. Here one understands the role of conditioning, as a tool towards the development of personal characteristics and skills needed to actualize a certain role, to facilitate a particular contribution. One here understands one's personal maturation as a unique development exemplified in the Personal Essence. This development is a unique manifestation in the Impersonal background. One knows one's unique, real function or work, as a specific contribution to the totality of life. One's personal realization, including one's real personal life and work, become seen as a unique manifestation of the Real, which is the same as one's unique contribution to the universe. This is a direct insight, not the result of a thought process. (The Pearl Beyond Price, pg 428)

Kabbalah And Psychology

The Sefirot (Sephiroth) are a fixture in almost the entire Western corpus of magickal practice, although most modern practicioners know only their names and perhaps their most common associations. However, they are an excellent map of the mind of mankind and can be a rich source of study. I am not here to proselytize for venturing on the 22 paths as much of the Western ceremonial tradition concentrates on, but rather to provide a treatment of the Sefirot in a easy to understand manner. Please note that my understanding of this topic is heavily informed by the Lurianic school of Kabbalah. Also note that these scribblings borrow heavily from other authors, as I consider this to be a “working document” as I continue to flesh out my thoughts. Consequently, this document will be altered periodically in ways large and small.

Before and surrounding the Sefirot themselves is the Ein-sof, the primal, all-encompassing "Infinite God". This God is the union of both Yesh (being) and Ayin (nothingness), as well as male and female and good and evil and all other basic oppositions. As such, it is the reconciliation of everything and it's moumenal opposite. It represents the primal unconscious that is completely beyond the individual’s conscious awareness. According to Jung:
There is little hope of our being able to reach even an approximate consciousness of the self, since however, much we make conscious there will always exist an indeterminate and undeterminable amount of unconscious material which belongs to the totality of the self.

Tzimtzum (Contraction/Concealment)
The doctrine of Tzimtzum explains the transition from an infinite, all-encompassing God to the existence of a pluralistic world. Luria held that in order to create an independent, finite world, Ein-sof (understood as the full plenum of being) must contract itself and, moreover, conceal an aspect of itself from itself. Tzimtzum creates a division within the divine essence. This division actually creates the possibility of knowledge, through a distinction between subject and object, knower and known. That which is concealed, that which Ein-sof no longer knows as part of itself, becomes the created, finite world, and can be known as distinct from God. From a psychological perspective it can be said that an act of Tzimtzum or concealment lies at the very core of the human psyche, for it is only through concealment and it's variants, i.e.: denial, repression, symbolization, displacement, condensation, etc. that a division is set up between subject and object, conscious and unconscious, and the human personality is born.

The Sefirot
The first of the Sefirot, the one closest to the infinite godhead (and, by extension, to the primal unconscious) is Keter (Crown), identified by the Kabbalists with ratzon (will, desire). In Hebrew the verb ratzon is used in the commonest expressions of desire (e.g. Ani ratzon = "I want"), suggesting that desire, a primal libido in all of its potential ramifications (sexual and otherwise) is the basic manifestation of the human psyche. One step removed from this "desire" is the Sefirah representing the intellect (Chochmah), suggesting that, as Freud held, intellect (i.e. cognition) only emerges as a superstructure built upon desire. The next Sefirah, Binah (Understanding) is according to the Kabbalists a blending of the first two. Binah is held to be the origin of all creativity and is thus referred to as the Celestial Mother. Through Understanding, will, directed by intellect gives birth to the lower worlds.

The next three Sefirot, represent a second triad which, in effect, repeats on a more concrete level the dialectic of the first three. Chesed (Love) is, according to the Kabbalists, fundamentally an expression of desire, whereas Din (Judgment) is an expression of intellect, for in judgment, distinctions that have been held in theory are actually made and implemented in reality. This implementation of the idea is perhaps the reason why this Sefirah is also referred to as Gevurah (strength or power), and serves as the foundation for aggression, and, ultimately, for the harsh, punitive judgments which the Jewish tradition identifies with evil. Love and Judgment are reconciled in the Sefirah Tiferet/Rachamin (Beauty/Compassion) which, according to the Kabbalists serves as a paradigm for all further reconciliations, both within the godhead and man.

The next two Sefirot, Netzach (Glory) and Hod (Splendor) can be interpreted as the further instantiation of man’s libido and intellect in the "glorious" and "splendorous" manifestations of human individual and collective cultural expression. These two Sefirot are reconciled by Yesod (foundation) which the Kabbalists equated with the phallus, and which in turn engages in a dynamic coupling with the final Sefirah (Malchut/ Shekhinah), representing the feminine aspect of the psyche. Indeed, it is the erotic coupling of male and female, and particularly, the masculine and feminine aspects of the psyche that serves as the most prominent Kabbalistic metaphor for the completion of God and creation. Jung, in his works on alchemy, discusses this theme as a symbol of the unification of the self (Jung, 1963).

The Instability of the Sefirot
There is an inherent weakness and disuniity in the Sefirot which results in their ultimate demise. The Sefirot "closest" to Adam Kadmon, Keter, Chochmah and Binah are comprised of more powerful vessels and they alone can withstand the impact of the lights emanating from the eyes of Adam Kadmon. Each of the others are shattered by the divine emanations.

Psychologically speaking we might say that man’s values and psychic structures as they are initially constituted cannot always serve him well as he matures. The strongest aspects of the ego, those most resistant to psychological decompensation in the face of a surge of libidinous energy, are the basic structures of cognition and perception. However, those aspects of the ego that bind, contain, and structure emotion (the seven lowest Sefirot which are spoken of in the Kabbalah as "emotional") are subject to a psychic shattering as a result of a surge of libidinal energy from the unconscious. Jung spoke of the intellectual and moral values keeping the archetypal images of the unconscious in check until the former are "weakened by age or criticism" (Jung, 1963, p. 473). Such weakened structures are subject to being overwhelmed by a flood of unconscious material.

Shevirat ha-Kelim, the Breaking of the Vessels
The seven lower Sefirot shatter. Even the highest Sefirot, which do not shatter, fall from a higher to a lower place.

The structures of the ego are insufficient for man to contain the energy and imagery of his unconscious mind. These structures must shatter, creating a chaotic, disjoint and dangerous but necessary state from which a new man and self can eventually emerge. Will and intellect have fallen in status. Reason can no longer resolve all difficulties in its path. The ego has been deflated. Kabbalistically, it is only when the "vessels break" that the individual can become truly human.

Tikkun Haolom, the Restoration of the World
The whole Sefirotic realm must be reconstituted and restored via Tikkun haolom (the Repair and Restoration of the world). The restored cosmos, however, will differ considerably from the world as it was originally created.

The restored Self is an achievement that transcends the spontaneous and automatic development of the ego in childhood. When the structures and values which served the nascent ego are shattered by personal crisis, e.g. in adolescence or mid-life, the relations between the primal unconscious, the ego and the personal unconscious must be restructured into a more unified, flexible (and hence more livable) arrangement. According to Jung, the archetype of the "Self" emerges after mid-life to perform this formidable task. Unlike the ego, the Self is not a bastion of consciousness which, like a rider on a horse, limits and controls the forces of the unconscious psyche. Just as the Kabbalist’s restored cosmos involves an integration rather than separation of its various levels, the Jungian Self involves an integration between "conscious", "pre-conscious" and "unconscious", and between anima, animus, persona and shadow. The Self manages desire through wisdom rather than repression and control, for its desire is already integrated with the higher elements of the soul. In Kabbalistic terms, the psyche after Tikkun is one in which each of the Sefirot are fully integrated with each of the others.

The psyche itself must be unified through a coincidence of opposites, especially between its masculine and feminine elements. Further, these inner unifications are reciprocally modeled from, and model, the significant relationships of human life, in such a manner that the inner dynamics of the human psyche reflect the structure and vicissitudes of man’s interpersonal existence. Eros plays a critical role in the psyche’s personal and interpersonal development. Man, even in the depths of his individual psyche, is essentially a social, interpersonal, being. The deeper one probes into one’s self, the surer one finds a representation of the "other". The formation of a Self is hardly a solitary enterprise but is, as the Kabbalists imply, conditioned upon relationships of passion, friendship, and mutual support. The individual, like God himself, cannot hope to be complete outside of such relationships.

The Reunification of Male and Female
The raising of the sparks has the effect of not only reunifying masculine and feminine aspects of the divine (and human) psyche but of harmonizing all other contradictions within the psyche as well. As we have see, for Jung, such unification is the most important psychotherapeutic principle. The fully individuated self is one which having seen the multiplicity, disharmony and conflict of an actual lived existence, comes to experience a harmony behind all of its manifold expressions and appearances.

Ritual Keys

A key is typically defined as a means of gaining or preventing entrance, possession or control of a location or process. A ritual key as it pertains to psychology, theurgy, mystery schools and magickal practice is a technique involving deliberate actions with appropriate intent, to provide additional meaning or potentials to various operations. The use of ritual keys can provide a number of advantages to an individual who understands proper usage.

A ritual key has similarities both to sigils and to programming by dint of the process of deciding how a given procedure will unfold. Many sigils are created by deciding what operation(s) are necessary for a given effect, such as “first, invoke my servitor, then have him find my target, and then have him attach him”. This is essentially a short program of three steps. Similarly, a ritual key may be constructed by use of a sigil or other method, but the core operation is deciding what sequence of steps will be taken and what method they employ”. Unlike a servitor which can be expected to manifest some degree of intelligence, a ritual key is a program in that it will activate according to the instructions given.

Advantages
One advantage of having a ritual key is a heightened degree of precision when creating an effect. By identifying what particular mechanism of operation will be employed, and process in which that principle will work, a specific operation can be programmed to operate consistently. An excellent illustration of this example are the ubiquitous icons that litter the desktops of computer users everywhere. When I click on a particular computer icon, the computer locates the operating files for Microsoft WordTM, loads them into memory along with any associated library files, and executes the program itself.

A similar but distinct advantage of the use of ritual keys is that common operations can be activated without having to engage in a ritual. Rituals can be very powerful, but consume materials and require time not only for the ritual but for setup and takedown. If we consider a banishing of a sacred space as an illustrative example, it is possible to use a ritual key to create this effect, rapidly and without use of a ritual, as the operator can essentially “shortcut” to the desired application. With a specific series of gestures, words or a combination, an operator may choose to immediately generate a specific effect provided that ritual key is invoked with intent. In this example, I have used a ritual key of a specific gesture and word (with intent) to banish and area and create a sacred space for other ritual use. This technique allows for “quick draw” utility both for attack and defense if the situation warrants it.

A final advantage when using a ritual key is that it can allow for greater emotional energy to be used in actual ritual for the actual ritual purpose and less for what are often considered preliminaries. A typical magickal worker maintains a certain amount of emotional and etheric energy at any given time, and magickal operations require this energy in order to maintain focus or power a specific effect. If we consider a ritual cleansing of a home or other building in this context with an estimated duration of 20 minutes, it allows one to spend more time on the ritual cleansing of the structure and less time on opening the ritual. By essentially preprogramming the preliminary or parallel elements of the ritual, more of this emotional and etheric energy can be directly expended on the task at hand. The ability to wring more “spell points” out of a given magickal operation can be a potent advantage, with group workings of workers with differing symbol sets being an obvious example.

Example
Steven wants to be able to generate a “spoiler” on an individual whom he suspects is attempting to leech his energy field. The method he has chosen is to generate a field of disruptive energies, a discordant cacophony of energetic noise that he feels will confuse and discourage his attacker, and make it difficult to create a link and which will tend to erode under the chaotic environment. Normally Steven requires a few minutes to “ramp up” for an operation, and he is concerned that by the time he is ready to activate this effect, the connections will already be made. Consequently, he designs a ritual key which is activated by a specific hand gesture and the word “no”, while concentrating with specific intent. Steven practices this for several days, consciously creating this aggressive intent while using the desired word and gestures until he feels he has assimilated the procedure and is ready to do so in the real world. When out in his daily life, he encounters his antagonist and with intent makes the gestures and pronounces the word “no”, and the effect materializes without the normal meditative time Steven requires.

Love Without Pity

“The difference between love and pity is the absence of perceived hope in the latter”

“Compassion is the vice of kings”


Love is a wonderful thing, and setting all arguments aside about the specific definition of love it is generally agreed that love is a desire to be with another, to miss them when they are gone, and to share experiences with them. However, love does have a dangerous variant, being pity. Pity is the destroyer of love and the destroyer of relationships. Pity implies two very grave errors.

The first error is an implicit assumption that something is wrong with the other. The second error is still greater since it involves the complex of the Ego. To pity another person implies that you are superior to them, and you fail to recognize their absolute right to exist as he or she is.

“... for there are love and love. There is the dove, and there is the serpent.”1 Sympathy, obviously, is the more correct frame of mind, for it is a pitiless love involving in reality an identification of oneself with the other; it is therefore an act of true love. “There is no bond that can unite the divided but love”2

Love for me does not involve taking care of someone. Taking care of someone makes me their father or guardian, not lover. Everyone needs help, but at what point does help or sacrifice for another become a crutch that stifles their self-sovereignty? That is the cruelest debasement, a theft of what matters most. It is a rape most vile.

Reference:
1.Liber AL I:57.
2.Liber AL I:41

Tesseract Magick Part IV: Tesseract Magick and the Enochian System

In recent months, I was introduced to a gentleman online who was interested in exploring the concept of Tesseract magic in the context of the enochian elemental tablets. An adept of the method pioneered by Benjamin Rowe in his excellent essay Enochian Temples, he was interested in expanding on the original method to fully encompass some potentialities of the system. I was intrigued by the idea, as my personal Great Table introduced in a previous posting had not been fully realized.

After some experimentation with the enochian elemental tablets, I was contacted and the failures he had encountered were detailed. It was resolved that he would continue to experiment, but that both of us would continue to explore the reasons for the difficulties being encountered. Having a general familiarity with the system, I began a systematic analysis of the enochian elemental tablets. In the course of my research, I undertook a mathematical analysis of the elemental correspondences of each of the squares in all four elemental tablets.

The enochian tablets in total are by definition a representation of a magical universe, presumably balanced among elemental forces of air, earth, fire and water. They are not. This is a bold statement, so I will explain in more detail. Mathematically, a balanced representation of four elemental forces where repetition is allowed (for example, a square with two faces being associated with Earth) but there the order in which those faces are colored is a type of combination. Mathematically, the number of combinations of four elements in sets of four where repetition is allowed but the order is important is 256. That is to say, a 16x16 grid of 256 squares is necessary to contain all possible combinations of elemental forces. By way of contrast, each enochian elemental tablet consists of a 12x13 grid of 156 combinations, which is approximately 60% of the number of squares required. Similarly, the entire enochian tablet containing all elemental tablets is likewise far too large to represent a balanced magical universe. Similar review of the Tablet of Union does not correct these errors. By definition, I submit that the underlying premise of the elemental tablets is flawed; it does not represent a balanced conception of the universe, and anyone with a tablet of paper and a free evening can verify this.

This discovery led to the creation of what is now referred to as the tesseract Great Table. Essentially, the Great Table is a 16x16 grid of tiles, with elemental forces associated with each face of each individual tile and consequently a balanced representation of the elemental forces of the universe. The Great Table is conveniently broken into four subtables with each subtable having lesser elemental angles like their enochian counterpart (fire of fire, water of air, etc.) and also inherently follows the mathematical and mathemagical connectivity structure of a tesseract.

As always, I invite discussion.

Tesseract Magic Part III: Operational Notes

The original Tesseract ritual as designed by Ebony Anpu was a working designed to essentially destroy this universe, shunting the caster to a new universe. Consequently, the caster might over the next week encounter their friend Steven, who has always had long brown hair and brown eyes. However, in addition to years of memories with Steven as just described, the caster might indeed have a duplicate set of memories where Steven was taller, with short black hair and different colored eyes. The ritual in question is not available except in the crudest and most incomplete versions on the Internet, as the creator and his students decided that the ritual was dangerous and not to be casually disseminated.

The ritual as it was originally created demonstratably works, but is not without inherent dangers. The original version was limited not in power but in scope; the caster could indeed shunt themselves to new universes but control was extremely limited, the caster could essentially get a new “version” that was dramatically better or worse than the previous with no recourse but to cast the ritual again. Finally, there was the issue of being able to do very little else in terms of expanding the corpus left by Ebony Anpu due to lack of understanding of the true mechanics of a tesseract. This is no slur on the work of Ebony Anpu; the mathematics of a tesseract were available at the time, but the true understanding of the actual architecture and it's connectivity were largely accessible only to a handful of university faculty.

At this point it is necessary both to summarize the first two portions of this document and place them in context to the overall operational schema of the expanded practice of Tesseract Magick. In Part I, the hypercube was illustrated and the base table was presented, along with an overview of how the base table illustrates the connectivity between the cubes, faces, edges and point of the tesseract. The base table and the tesseract illustration are sufficient to turn a tesseract. I have been experimenting in this fashion and I have enjoyed a higher degree of control regarding the new conditions I am wanting to jump to. The reason for additional control appears to be in the cubes. By standing on one cube with a known (and undesireable) set of conditions, one can move through cubes with changing conditions, changing them as you go. Note that a cube in a tesseract has six (6) faces like any other cube, so up to six circumstances can be undertaken, although normally the number of circumstances desired for change is smaller. This is one of the projects I would like to work with others to develop a concrete methodology on.

Part II concerns what is loosely called the Great Table, formed of four elemental tablets of 16x16 square configuration. The table has been published, but in actuality there is a second version of this table consisting of a single 16x16 square. Both tables have elemental attributions like the Enochian tablets. However, at this time these two versions are being reviewed. The two forms of the great table are two expressions of the same concepts, as both are designed to reflect a balanced magickal universe of air, earth, fire and water elemental energies, with each 4x4 grid (the base table) being numbered from 0 to 15. Now, the number of possible combinations of four elements where an element can be on more than one face is permissible and where the order the elements are displayed in is 256. This corresponds perfectly to a 16x16 grid formed of [4] base tables, each laid out in a manner similar to the Enochian elemental tablets. The purpose of the great table in either configuration allows aids in the projecting of elemental energies outward. As this is essentially working notes I shall be by necessity brief.

When projecting elemental energies for various purposes, the Great Table is of great value. Two primary methods are being reviewed at this time. The first method is to locate the square on the 16x16 grid with the designed alignment of elemental energies. When the square has been located, a sigil is drawn over the entire 16x16 matrix, with at least a single point located in each sub-table that is being invoked. I should have an example of this available shortly. For convenience, the numbers allocated to the various squares are replaced in a manner I shall presently post.

Alas, I shall have to continue this later.

Tesseract Magick Part II: The Elemental Tables

Tesseract Magick Part I: Intro and Navigation

Tesseract Magick is the name given to a ritual and a small body of knowledge that was originally created by Ebony Anpu and later carried on but not expanded on (to my knowledge) by the various Hawk & Jackal groups. Some material is out there on the internet, but in this case the primary ritual was deemed too powerful for the untrained to use and was wisely set aside. However,Wade Long retained a personal copy of the complete ritual. A former student of Ebony, he has the only physical handwritten copy of the ritual taken directly from Ebony's original. Since Wade had continued to use the ritual, along with the Rosslyn grove it was possible to have a solid understanding of the rituals and how it works based on the understanding of the creator. Unfortunately, that understanding of the tesseract was incomplete. This is no slight to Ebony Anpu, as I have enormous respect for his accomplishments and body of work. However, the available research on hypersolids simply wasn't available at the time. Consequently, his body of work could have been so much larger and encompassing.

The concept of Tesseract Magick was originally developed and promulgated by Ebony Anpu and continued by various groups and individuals since his death. A tesseract is what is referred to as a 4-cube or hypercube, loosely defined as a fourth-dimensional equivalent to a standard cube. A three-dimensional cube has (8) vertices, (12) edges and (6) faces. By comparison, a tesseract has (16) vertices, (32) edges, (24) faces and in fact can be “unrolled” into (8) cubes the same way a standard cube can “unroll” into a cavalry cross.

Let us consider how a tesseract is constructed. For convenience, the (16) vertices of the tesseract have been labeled from 0 to 15. If you look at the bottom of the image you can easily locate point 0, and a quick examination will reveal that vertex 0 connects to points 1, 2 and 3 to form a face. However, the layout of a tesseract can be very difficult to follow, and people unfamiliar with the intricate layout of this figure may have trouble. Luckily, there exists a simple chart that can reveal the construction of a tesseract and more importantly the relation of those components to the other portions of the tesseract.

The figure to the right is referred to mathematically as an adjacency matrix, which I will refer to as the base table for convenience. The base table can show one how to verify all faces and even cubes in the tesseract and their relationships to each other. Let us now learn about the relationships that can be discovered using this table.

Using the base table, it is easy to identify all of the 24 faces of the tesseract. All rows and columns reflect a face, so for example vertices 5,4,12 and 13 form a face and vertices 5,7,3 and 1 form a face as well. Please take a moment to review on the tesseract drawing to verify you understand. Now that you have verified the vertices of 8 faces, we can discover the others.

On the base table, a 2x2 grouping of squares is also a face, so for example vertices 8,9,10 and 11 form a face as does 10,2,6 and 14. Note that as you move from right to left, these faces “wrap around” back to the other side. For example, the square labeled 5 in the top right wraps around to 1,9 and 13 to form a square. For your convenience I have shown small squares to help illustrate this for you, inserting more “phantom base squares” to aid in understanding. With the (16) additional faces now shown, we can now identify all faces on a tesseract.

To find the eight cubes within a tesseract the method is even simpler. Every 2x4 grid of squares are the vertices of a particular cube. The image below shows them in two colors for easy reference.

It should be understood that it is also possible to determine all vertices that connect to any given vertex. In this case, taking the north, south, east and west neighbors will show these relationships. For example, vertices 14,2,8 and 11 are directly connected to vertex number 10. Again, please verify of the tesseract illustration to verify this.